Stripe launches new subscription-billing service aimed at SaaS companies

If you’re selling software these days, you’re probably selling it over the internet on a subscription basis. Stripe’s new version of its subscription-billing service, available Thursday in the U.S. and Canada, was designed to help both fledgling and established SaaS companies get paid on time and without incident.

Stripe Billing replaces an older product called Stripe Subscriptions, and Stripe said the new product relies on machine-learning techniques to help reduce missed or late customer payments. It was also designed to be easier to use than other recurring payment systems; in a release, Stripe pointed out that two developers at Wi-Fi router company Eero were able to launch subscription billing for its customers in two weeks using the new service.

Companies fail to collect online payments for any number of reasons, including expired credit cards or errors with account numbers. Stripe said its new Billing product uses predictive technology to identify the best time to retry a missed payment collection in hopes of breaking through to the customer.

The company also struck deals with major credit-card providers including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover that allow its customers to automatically receive updated credit-card numbers without forcing their customers to re-enter their details. And Stripe Billing supports wire transfers and ACH payments direct from bank accounts, which will help larger companies with bigger corporate accounts get paid.

Stripe customers will be charged around 0.5 percent of payments made through the new Billing service, although the company is waiving fees on the first $1 million in payments processed through the service, it said.

Here’s a video of Stripe co-founder John Collison describing the modern online payments world at our GeekWire Summit last year.

Tom Krazit, GeekWire's Cloud & Enterprise Editor, covered technology for news organizations including IDG, CNET, and paidContent before serving as executive editor of Gigaom and the Structure conference series. Reach him at tom@geekwire.com and follow him @tomkrazit.